I
think I’ve mentioned this earlier that I find the latest Civ 4 add-ons hardly playable and enjoyable: Beyond the Sword is one of the main culprits. The balance of the game seem to have tipped more towards combat, and (as frequent Civ players know) being in a constant wage of war will eventually hurt technology progress. With announcement of Civ 5 (“Coming this Fall”), one can only hope for the better.
Talking about civilization, I had one link still in my queue of links to be elaborating on, which is Thinking Meat’s “Was civilization a bad idea” posting a while ago. The posting was a response to Spencer Well’s Seed Magazine essay ‘Pandora’s seed’, where the geneticist discusses how the rate of cultural evolution (technological advances for example) seem to have taken a toll on human evolution. As an example, the geneticist notes that:
The unprecedented rise in chronic disease in westernized societies is perhaps the most obvious example. I say westernized, rather than western, because we are now well aware of the growing incidence of heart disease, diabetes and plain-old obesity in the developing world, particularly in places such as India and China. As they become more like us, they are taking on many of our worst attributes as well.
If you think of the medical progress we’ve made since the early ages, where thanks to medical science the life expectancy went from, what, 20 years to 65+ years, it feels a bit ironic that thanks to that progress we’re in need of more medical care these days than in the Stone Ages and that our health has come with a (monetary) price.
I guess the point of healthy life is that you should just eat healthy and with moderation. Otherwise the bugs will take over in a couple centuries.